Next Tuesday evening we will be celebrating the festival of the Jewish calendar known as Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. The Torah asks us to count 49 days from Pesach to Shavuot, known as the period of the Omer. During this time we have the practice to refrain from...

Next week we will be commemorating the holiday known as Yom Yerushalayim, celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem after the 1967 war. After the UN partition plan and resulting Arab-Israeli war, the old city of Jerusalem remained under Jordanian rule. Many...

Wandering through the “dessert” (from challahcrumbs.com) This week’s parsha, Parshat Bamidbar, is the opening to a new book of the Torah called Bamidbar or Numbers. This parsha introduces us to the 12 tribes of Israel and their encampment in the desert. Each tribe had...

The end of the year comes with many types of evaluations. We have tests, exams, essays, and papers, all of which we use to look at how much our students have learned during the present school year. The school at which I have worked for the past 11 years has three...

This Sunday we will celebrate the holiday of Lag Ba-Omer, marking the 33rd day of the period of counting between Passover and Shavuot. In Israel, there is a tradition of having barbecues and bonfires. For our recipe this week, we invite you to make your favorite...

This week’s parsha details the laws of the Shmitta year – the seventh year in a cycle during which time no planting was allowed. This was to give the land a sabbatical year. For this week we are making cupcakes with green sprinkles to symbolize the growth of the land...

Parsha Recipe for Emor – Parsha Pie! (Adapted from pragmaticattic.wordpress.com) Parsha Emor discusses the cycle of holidays: the weekly Shabbat, Passover, Shavuoth, Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Immediately following this is a discussion of...

We could spend an entire year studying this week’s Torah portion. There is an abundance of mitzvoth in the parsha that demand a total commitment to justice, kindness, and fairness. However, what is significant is that the parsha sees these mitzvoth as key elements in...

I wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a wonderful and meaningful Pesach. The Seders are a special event in the Jewish calendar where we can put our personal touch on the flow and celebration of the evening as we retell the story of the exodus from Egypt....